Accidental Sire(38)

You would think vampires would have learned over the years that a paper trail created complications. Maybe they were trying to stockpile blackmail material on one another? Forever? Also, why did they rely on paper so much? Did they have something against digital records?

And the problem with storing those files in an industrial-sized laundry cart was that the papers in the files shifted around and got mixed together. So now I had to organize and file, which had to be some sort of mental endurance test, like Psyche sorting through all those seeds to impress her hateful goddess mother-in-law.

Ha, and Morgan said that Greek mythology class would never apply in real life.

I rolled up the sleeves of my work-sensible cardigan and got to work sorting through my mega-hamper of files. The color-coding of the files made no sense, but I stacked them in colored piles on the floor anyway, just to move them out of the damn hamper.

This was still a better job than cleaning the dollar theater in my hometown. I couldn't eat popcorn for years after that summer.

In the midst of all these files, I spotted a few familiar nuggets of information, like incident reports within Half-Moon Hollow involving Dick and his efforts to keep his former colleagues from selling counterfeit Beats by Dre headphones to innocent humans.

One file listed Ophelia's progress in her "probationary period," which I immediately tossed into the blue pile without skimming over it. "Nope. Nope. Nope."


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Another file listed all of the expenses paid to the University of Kentucky for services to undead students. As a semi-sort-of government agency, the Council subsidized counseling services, blood shipping and storage fees, sunproofing costs, and other expenses associated with housing undead students. I scanned the top sheet, and these fees seemed . . . excessive.

"So. Many. Zeros," I muttered, blinking at the bottom "total" number.

I probably would have appreciated living in New Dawn more if I'd known how much that little social experiment was costing our undead taxpayers. Did we really have that many vampire students living in New Dawn?

I flipped through the pages, using my superhuman speed-reading. The numbers just didn't seem right. There were eight student residence floors in the building and forty to fifty kids a floor, dead and undead, depending on the number of students who demanded a single room. But the reports listed services rendered to more than 235 vampires. That would only be possible if two-thirds of the building was occupied by vampire students. And trust me, as someone who walked around that noisy lobby during daylight hours, that was not possible.

But since I was not a math major, I wasn't sure I was qualified to analyze Council spending. Also, as far as I knew, this was some creative attempt to cover the Council's illicit spending on defense projects and Doomsday Preppers blood storage. And I definitely didn't want to interfere with that. So I put those files in the scary red financial pile and forgot I'd ever read them.





6




It's important to document your childe's milestones. But make sure you know the difference between "memorabilia" and "evidence."

-The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire

It was Friday night, and I was doing homework. This was a truly embarrassing moment in my social history.

Jane had actually left Ben and me alone in the house unchaperoned so she and Gabriel could run some errands. It felt like a test of her trust in us, like she and Ben would both fail if he ended up running home to his parents. There was very little pressure on me. I could only fail if I ordered up pay-per-view porn and imported blood by delivery.

I didn't know if I'd have the energy to go out if I had anywhere to go. I'd spent the last three days obliterating Jane's filing backlog and learning to lie through my teeth regarding her whereabouts. I'd gotten to know Sammy a little better and some of the nicer people in the accounting department. I avoided Gigi, Ben, and the IT department like they were carriers of the actual plague, which was difficult, since Gigi turned out to be even nicer than I'd first thought and frequently stopped by my desk to see if I needed anything. 

And so, emotionally and physically drained, I was sitting at the kitchen table, working on a lit assignment, when Ben walked in and, upon seeing me, stopped as if he was considering turning back around and skipping breakfast. Whatever he was thinking, he ended up sighing and walking to the fridge to pour himself a mug of A negative.

He sat across the table from me, pointedly not making eye contact as he took a deep sniff of his breakfast. I rolled my eyes and continued typing. Because it was super-easy to create concise, thoughtful analyses of the great works of literature when there was a boy pointedly ignoring you right behind your laptop screen.